


Urgent Dispatch

by Margo_Kim



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Cole (Dragon Age) - Freeform, Dragon Age Quest: Protect Clan Lavellan, Epistolary, Gen, Lavellan Backstory, Letters, Minor Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus, Mission Related, Mission Reports, POV Lavellan, letters are addressed to varric but he's not directly in the text, protect clan lavellan bad ending, vivienne (dragon age) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 12:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12911526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: Another delay to our return. We’re following reports of the Venatori west to the Wastes. The diversion will add about a week to our mission. Reschedule the return banquet according.Certain matters of the Inquisition demand attention even when the Inquisitor is on the road. Via letters, Lavellan exchanges gossip and war plans.





	Urgent Dispatch

All—

Another delay to our return. We’re following reports of the Venatori west to the Wastes. The diversion will add about a week to our mission. Reschedule the return banquet according.

Reports from local scouts on rifts in the Wastes. There’s few out this way besides treasure hunters and Venatori. The treasure hunters I might leave alone, but I won’t leave Venatori isolated, unguarded rifts with which to experiment. Better to handle it now while I’m already so far west. I don’t want to come back.  

Regarding the situation in Wycome, if my clan is to be scapegoated for the poisoning in the city, and fleeing would seem only to admit guilt and abandon our city counterparts, I support our Nightingale’s proposal to send them into the city. Keeper Istimaethoriel is always game to murder some troublesome shems (Ambassador, feel free to rephrase that as needed for the official memo). Let my clan take care of the city. The Inquisition has not yet directly invaded a sovereign city to impose our will, and I’d like to keep it that way for the time being, especially while Hinterland refugees are relying so heavily on generous trade terms with the Free Marches.

Commander, I’d rather have our troops working on repair work. Skyhold is isolated enough. Right now the only road secure to handle an evacuation is the mountain road south, and it won’t be passable later in the season. Is there any progress on widening the path east to Calenhad? I’d rather have too many roads to Skyhold than too few. It’s the Dalish in me—we know value in briskly moving on.

I agree with your assessment on Fairbanks, sell what you need to shore up his men. If they can hold the Graves rather than us, so much the better.

If there’s still any soldiers hanging around looking for something to do or raw recruits that could benefit from a very gentle if unconventional foray into the field, go ahead and lay bait for the mysterious giant nug. Worst case scenario nothing happens and our men learn a valuable lesson about how glorious our cause really is, best case scenario Helisma gets a new subject of study and our spymaster gets a big new pet.

Inquisitor

Please pass the other letter in this envelope to Varric, unless Varric was the one to pass this letter to you.

 

 

 

My dearest Varric,

Hello, darling, I hope you’re sleeping well. I worry about you, you look so dreadful in the mornings that I can hardly stand the sight. (I’m doing my best Vivienne impression, can you tell? I love travelling with her, I can feel my tone growing more arch by the hour. Yesterday she told me that no wonder I could recruit so many to the cause of the Inquisition, since even with the disadvantage of my race, my rustic charm appeals so powerfully to the lowest common denominator. She’s my icon—I wish I knew how to stab someone and leave them bleeding out as they tried to puzzle if they’d been stabbed at all.)

The Hissing Wastes are beautiful, if you’re curious, and oddly peaceful. Especially after the Oasis. Find Dorian and tell him what trouble his countrymen are making for me. We couldn’t take ten steps in the desert without running into a pack of Tevinter cultists, and believe me, the charm of fighting them has long worn off. I think even Bull is disappointed when they show up, and you know how happy slaughtering Vints used to make him. (The Iron Bull wants me to tell you to tell Dorian that Bull’s looking forward to—never mind that because I just reminded Bull that I’m not dirty talking Dorian on his behalf through you. Dirty letters should not have multiple degrees of separation. Here’s business: if you please, catch Krem before he heads our west to bring the Chargers to the new holding in the Oasis when they’re done with Adamant. Bull has other things he’d also like me to write, but at a certain point, Bull can get his own paper and stop taking up space on the Inquisitor of the Inquisition’s Inquisitorial Inquiry, can’t he?)

After ten minutes of whining YES WHINING BULL STOP READING OVER MY SHOULDER I’ve agreed to add this pointless remark from him: “It’s the Iron Bull. Just saying hi.”

I can’t believe I’m going to stab Bull in the back tomorrow morning and leave him to die slowly out on the dunes.

Bull’s gone now, still laughing. I shouldn’t have given in, it’s like when you give a dog some of your table scraps when you’re trying to teach them not to beg. We’re all still alive out here at least, even if no one seems thrilled by that fact. I don’t begrudge—give me a second, let me check over my shoulder to make sure he’s gone—I don’t begrudge Bull whatever he has to do to keep his spirit up. I don’t think he likes it out here. He misses the Chargers and Dorian, and I can’t figure out which he’s pining for more. I thought taking him with me out of Skyhold would help keep his mind off becoming Tal-Vasoth. As it turns out, the desert is full of nothing but time to think. And sand. And Venatori. Aren’t you glad I didn’t bring you? Especially since it seems as if we’re never coming back.

Vivienne and Cole are doing fine. I think. Vivienne would never admit if she wasn’t, and I’m not sure Cole can feel physical discomfort. I know he doesn’t sleep. We’ve been sharing a tent for the last week (scandalous! illicit! taking advantage of our young spirit! you can stop writing your latest romance novel right there, Varric, it’s just because Bull’s been sleeping outside lately and Vivienne has immediately moved into his tent so she can sleep alone), and I keep rolling over in the middle of the night to see him sitting up, watching me.

“Cole, darling,” I ask, in again my best Vivienne tone because the only way to perfection is through practice, “what are you doing?”

“You’re in the Fade,” he says. He has very large eyes, have you noticed? He looks like a fish that flopped up on dock and no one will do him the kindness of kicking him back into the water. “I can see you in it and it’s in you.”

“And is that good?” I ask, Vivienne impression done because all I’ve mastered so far is saying _darling_ in that Vivienne way (you know the way).

“Dreams dreaming dreamer drowning dragging drooling dropping,” Cole replies, or something like that, or that’s at least what it sounds like when I wake up in the middle of the night barely conscious and Cole is being Cole. He likes my dreams, is what I’ve gathered. Good. One of us should.

No nightmares, before you worry, if you worry about that kind of thing (what do dwarves think of dreaming? kindly represent your entire species and please let me know). Embarrassingly enough, they’re just dreams about home. I hate feeling homesick. It’s my least favorite feeling after stabbed, and both tend to happen when I’m out in the field too long. Sometimes home looks like Skyhold. Sometimes it looks like Haven. Once it looked like that brothel in Val Royeux, but then the dream shifted to a very different genre and let’s just say I couldn’t look Blackwall or Cassandra in the eye the next day. (I give you permission to tell that fact to Blackwall. Do not under any circumstances tell Cassandra.) Recently I’ve been dreaming of my clan. I wake up in Skyhold to find they’ve moved into our training yards. My Keeper hijacks the gardens. The halla take up residence in our dining hall. So, I suppose, maybe there’s one nightmare lately.

Ah, listen to me. I’m such a bad elf. At least I’m only confessing it to our resident bad dwarf.

Bull is being Bull again. I’d better go deal with that. Write soon, either a letter to me or the next chapter of _Swords and Shields._ Please, Varric. Cassandra’s face upon seeing the next chapter will be the true oasis in the desert.

Your Inquisitor, Herald of Andraste, Champion of Thedas Which Is Bigger Than Kirkwall And Therefore Makes Me The Ideal Candidate For Your Sequel,

Ayani Lavellan the First, the Last, the Greatest

Please pass the other letter in this envelope over to Josie, if Leliana hasn’t commandeered it already.

 

***

 

All—

We turn back east. Maker willing I should be back at Skyhold by the end of the month. Vivienne and Cole will accompany me back, the Iron Bull may remain at the Oasis to coordinate the Chargers if they have not yet arrived by the time we plan to depart.

Ambassador: coordinate with Dorian about his intelligence on Tevinter resistance, and enlist your contacts to put their thumb on the scale in the Senate’s upcoming vote. I am not interested in discretion anymore. If a Dalish clan lingered too close to the Imperium’s borders, the magisters would declare it an act of war, but violent Tevinter cultists can occupy half of the Orlesian west and all the Senate can offer us is a half-hearted shrug? At the very least, we will force them to shrug in the public record.

Nightingale: as for the possible new faction in the Chantry rising against us, I wasn’t aware the Chantry did anything these days except form factions to rise against us. Send your operatives, I want a sense of scope. Are these gossiping old women or are they something far less threatening? I am tired of appeasing the clerics one by one; at this point I’d rather piss them off en masse. Before it gets to that point, how can we move the Chantry past its current state of one hundred warring parishes?

Commander: yes to the escort. Make clear to the men we are not in the Graves to refight Orlais’s civil war. However regarding your other concern, I do not and will not authorize the large-scale engagement of a military force within an ally’s borders without abundant cause. I know you will think me overcautious on this; I think you overzealous. Do we thus balance each other out? We lack the men to make our first resort our military, and we lack the goodwill to openly oppose the leaders of nominally friendly areas. We are not—at this time nor any time in the future—a military institution. We are an institution with a military. Let’s keep our current wars to one, and let our ambassador handle our situation in Wycome. Beyond concerns of excessive military zeal, I also doubt force is the best way to appease the nobles of the Free Marches to accept the rule of elves; our armies may remind them that I too am an elf. If we restore the city to peace through diplomacy, my clan and the city elves will have a fair safer standing in Wycome. Ambassador, please rally some sense into the Free Marchers as per your advisement. 

Finally: we killed another dragon. I’ve attached the coordinates of where its remains lie. If any of you have any ideas with what to do with a dragon corpse rotting in a distant desert, it is yours for the claiming.

Inquisitor

 

 

 

My favorite dwarf! I say, because I assume Lace is reading this, before she bundles it up for raven flight. You are a flower in the desert, the gem of the Inquisition, and I will not forget that you still owe me five sovereigns for your very bad luck at Wicked Grace.

Now that Varric is reading this letter, let me begin again: Dwarf! Who is certainly in my life. How fares our Skyhold? Cold? Windy? Full of rubble and interpersonal tensions? I hope Sera is still tormenting anyone blue-blooded enough to know all their grandparents’ names, and Dorian is confirming every expectation of the haughty magister with a heart of ice. Are the mages and ex-templars still at each other’s throats? Does the day still start with Cullen crowing at the crack of dawn at some poor recruit who sneezed out of formation? Ah, don’t tell me. I’m painfully homesick just thinking about it. I can see it now—Blackwall glowering in the stables, Cassandra scowling in the yards, Solas pondering in the rotunda. (Do any of my friends smile?) And you, as tucked away as you can be while still holding court in the main hall. I hope Hawke’s departure hasn’t left you too bereft. If it’s any consolation, I shall soon return to Skyhold to sweep you up companionably into my bosom. I rush closer to you in all your unspeakable you-ness even as I write (hence the wobbly handwriting—back of an elk, a monster of an elk, and by the way has the giant nug arrived at the keep yet? I’m tremendously excited for the nug. Promises to be a smooth ride).

The Iron Bull has decided to sleep in a tent again now that we’re back at the Oasis. The Hissing Wastes—lovely, beautiful, awe-inspiring, a revelation, a mystery the size of the night sky reflected off the perfectly white sands, quiet, calm, hushed, a sacred feeling that made the Anchor ache more than usual, the rifts a disgusting violation of the land’s serenity. While the Oasis? Mosquitos. No awe. Just mosquitos. Mosquitos with enough bite to bother even Bull. I’d take more grim cruel pleasure in my strong friend’s mild suffering if I was not getting eaten alive either. If the world even calms down and becomes a decent place in which to live, I’d love to take you to the Wastes, just as soon as we figure out how to skip everything before it.

Anyway, Bull is back in a tent, which means we’re all doubled up again. Vivienne’s sharing with Cole now, and I’m with Bull. Whatever hesitation she might have felt sleeping next to a spirit was nothing next to the comfort of knowing that Cole does not snore (not sleeping helps with that). Apparently I’m a nightmare to share a tent with. I’ve heard that before, but never so elegantly as Vivienne put it. I felt like I was being slapped by Andraste herself. (That’s why they call me the Herald.) Bull’s a pleasant companion in a tent, as I’m sure Dorian can attest. It’s like sleeping next to a hearth. I didn’t expect to want that in the desert. Foolish. I of all people should know how cold the nights can get. We Dalish are very proud of suffering through them.

Ah, there it is again. You didn’t need to point out any previous letter’s bitterness. I have a tongue and can taste as well as you. As it happens, I don’t particularly want to talk about my clan. I carry Lavellan with me wherever I go; you carry Bianca. We live such public lives as wildly famous universally adored celebrities—let’s keep private what we may.

In other news, I think I’m fighting with my commander via dispatch. Josephine told me he put her in mind of a hammer for whom the world is a series of nails. The nails are my fingers lately. He has an army, he builds an army, he trains an army, he wishes to use his army. Understandable enough. But Varric, I cannot get another report from my advisors in which Leliana and Josephine offer nuanced, thoughtful responses to a complicated situation, and the commander recommends murder by men in uniforms. I find murder distasteful at the best of times—me, perpetually blood-spattered, wading through what feels like half the Imperium’s population dead at my hands, writing to tell you that maybe we should talk through our problems—but I find it particularly repulsive when we call it something else. A skirmish or an encounter or a coordinated maneuver. I can’t stand any of them. I find assassination more honest, for whatever sense that makes. Cultural memory, I suppose. I’m a simple bitter elf who hates dull swords wielded by strangers in dress code ordered to kill by a man with gleaming, untouched armor.

Yet I let him recruit. I encourage it. I send him new soldiers myself. There’s a size and power an army reaches where you never need use it. What an enemy tries to do is stop you before your army gets to that point. That’s why Orlais slaughtered the citizens of the Dales, don’t you know? Maybe we were letting the darkspawn decimate the field until only our forces remained, or maybe Orlais saw the chance to clear two enemies from the fields at once. The truth doesn’t matter (of course it matters). What matters is the result: we were getting strong, and they made sure we wouldn’t, and they set us to fleeing. That’s everything you need to know about the Dalish, really. We were almost strong once when we could still almost remember being strong, and now we flee, we flee, we flee.

Ugh. (I said, “ugh,” aloud and then I wrote it down for you. Admire my commitment to accurate reporting.) I said I didn’t want to talk about it and then interrogated myself on your behalf. Fenedhis, Varric. Translated: shit. But you knew that, didn’t you? You still haven’t told me more of your Dalish friend, the troublemaker dubbed Daisy. Is it on purpose, Varric? Do you think I’m like Sera? Afraid of the elfy? Maybe you’re right. I don’t like wandering, truth be told. I’ve enjoyed these last months having a place to come home to. Told you I was a shitty elf.

I miss Skyhold, and all my brooding friends. Even you, you covert brooder, sulking when no one is looking.

A Dalish in the streets, a city elf in the sheets,

Ayani

 

***

 

Ambassador Montilyet,

I regret to inform you that a contingent of soldiers gathered from other cities in the Free Marches attacked Wycome and slew most of the elves within, including all of the Dalish clan.

They avoided attacking humans when possible, and were willing to meet with us once their bloody work was done. They professed shock that Duke Antoine had been using red lyrium and insisted that all they knew was that the elves had rebelled and killed the rightful rulers of the city.

This has all been branded a tragic misunderstanding, and the nobles who now rule Wycome insist that they will repay the Inquisition for this horrible mistake.

I await my return to Skyhold at your earliest convenience.

Yours, Lady Guinevere Volant

 

 

 

Ayani:

There are no words for this. I have no words for this. I am so sorry, so horribly sorry, I apologize with my whole heart that my counsel led to this tragedy. I am ashamed, though I know how insignificant that shame is in the face of my failure.

I offer my resignation. I have included a list of qualified replacements that both I and Leliana trust.

I am sorry beyond words for your unthinkable loss. I am sorry for my part in it, and sorry to heartbreak thinking of the grief you must bear.

Josephine

 

 

 

Your Grace, Ambassador Montilyet worked as well as she could with the situation of the city. She should not be punished for the realities of war when she has served so faithfully and ably our cause.

I am sorry for your loss. I don’t know what to say. I have never been a man good with words. I can promise you an army does its best to ensure that something like this never happens again.

Commander Cullen

 

***

 

All—

I have received your news. The ambassador’s offer is denied.

Concerning other matters, we have departed Val Royeux by the sea route. The Orlesian merchant fleet travels swiftly. We will return to Skyhold ahead of schedule.

I find at the moment, I don’t care what you chose to do. Decide what you want amongst yourselves.

We’ll discuss matters in person when I return.

Inquisitor

 

 

 

Varric.

You were correct in post script. I don’t want to discuss it.

But here I am. In a cabin, on a ship that moves whether I help or not. The crew leaves me alone, as do my travel companions. Cole tries to speak to me. Bull keeps him away. Swoon for my bodyguard, except when he fails. Cole brought me your letter. It shouldn’t have arrived yet. Perhaps he plucked it from the air. He wants to help, he says. I thought about clawing his eyes out, and he said he’d let me if it would help, but he won’t let me because it won’t. I threw his hat overboard. Felt bad about it. He felt bad I felt bad. Bull pulled Cole away again. Bull’s giving him lectures on boundaries. Bull is Tal-Vashoth now. I mean to ask him which he thinks hurts worse, exile or execution.

I should have attacked. I should have had Cullen attack. But I feared a direct show of force would hasten violence against the city. Against the elves. It’s always the elves. They always slaughter us. In the Dales or in the cities. Everything we build, everything we love, everything just one shem’s bad day away from extinction.

They are dead. They are dead. I am Clan Lavellan now.

Do you know why they sent me to the conclave? Because that was my job.

Stupid. Stupid. It’s my fault.

Here’s a story for your book, the one I know you’re writing about me, about everyone here, about all the Great Good Work we do:

Once upon a time there was an elf loved her home and her people, but she loved herself as well, and since those two facts could only be apologetically joined, she went to the Conclave when asked. She had left her clan enough times before that this instance was remarkable only because of the permission granted. This was what she did. She left her people. She missed them. She returned. She hated them. She left. She missed them. She returned. She hated herself.

City elves found her clan now and then. They joined and stayed, or they joined and left. The ones who stayed stayed forever and told her frequently how lucky she was to be among the Dalish. The ones who left left forever, and she found their soft cowardice repulsive. The winters were hard, almost as hard as the summers, which were almost as hard as the springs, which was at least bearable compared to the autumns, which paled in comparison to the winters. She hated whatever season it was and whatever season would come next. Then a city elf would complain of a chill, and she’d remind them that this was what being Dalish meant. Freezing, sweating, fighting, fleeing, fearing and being feared. It was alright if she hated it, she reasoned. But a city elf? They’d chosen this life, as she never had. They both had to eat shit, but the volunteer should at least smile while they did so.

“Is that really how you felt?” I can hear you asking it, even as I write. No, no, of course not, and also yes, yes, always. It’d be easier to explain if you were a proper dwarf, Orzammar and everything, cast out from the Stone to our scorching surface. You’d hate it in Orzammar, I have it on good authority from everyone who has ever met you including yourself, but maybe you’d love it if you lived there. You’d hate it because you’re you, and you’d love it because it made you you. And you wouldn’t like everyone there, but you’d love enough that stepping away from them would feel like bare soles finding glass. Or maybe it’s not that you’d love them, but you’d know, and they’d know you, they birthed you and they raised you and they taught you, they put a sword in your hands and told you who to hit and told you where to hunt and showed you where water flowed the clearest and berries grew the sweetest and nursed you when you picked rashvine instead, and they made sure that you’d never go hungry at the same time that they made sure you’d never be full either, and they watched you, and you watched them, and we all watched each other to make sure that we were being Dalish right, because when all you have scraps of who you used to be, what matters is how you wear them. What is a good elf? A good elf is an elf who convinces everyone around them that they’re a good elf. We were great once, Varric, haven’t you heard? I can tell you the stories, we barely remember them ourselves but we’ll tell them anyway, tell each other and tell our children that this is what it means to be us. We playact forgotten glories of immortal days. We were immortal once, but these days we die. We die easily for no reason at all.

That’s what it means to be a good elf.

I hope that’s satisfied Cole. If one more person tells me how sorry they are, I’ll jump off this fucking boat and swim till sea becomes ocean.

Sincerely

me

the clan

Lavellan

 

post script, reluctantly added. your letter's final joke was poorly-timed and insensitive at best, and I question your good taste in writing. but. yes. I am, somehow, despite everything, heartened to hear the giant nug arrived. and I miss everyone and everything, you most of all.


End file.
